Installing Windows on an Intel Mac is pretty easy, but there can be many issues using Bootcamp (Apple's official software used to help you install Windows).
My buddy wanted to install Windows on their MacBook Pro but they had an older version of macOS installed. This meant that their version of Bootcamp was also older. Well, Windows gets updated all the time and Bootcamp needs to be updated to keep up with these changes. Also while we were doing this, I found tons of comments online of people also having various issues using Bootcamp so I knew I was not the only one who has had issues no matter the version of macOS I was using.
To fix the problem we did it the manual way. Not using Bootcamp much at all. It worked!
To figure this out, I used this guide for some inspiration but it sure did not do it all for me.
- Get a flash drive to install Windows on. Boot into macOS on your mac.
- Format the flash drive to exFAT. Not FAT32. This is because FAT32 can only handle file sizes up to 4gb but Windows 10 now has files large then that so you must use exFAT format.
- Download the Windows ISO from the Microsoft website.
- Mount the ISO file on your mac. You can do this in Finder by right clicking the ISO file > Open with > DiskImageMounter.app. This mounting will then add an option in Finder on the left hand side panel by your flash drive. You will be able to view all of the files inside of the ISO file.
You should see in Finder files and folders like:
- autorun.inf
- boot
- bootmgr
- bootmgr.efi
- setup.exe
- sources
- support
- efi
Copy (drag and drop) all of these files onto your flash drive.
- Open up Bootcamp and select the option to Download drivers from the Apple servers. This will download the latest BC6 drivers from Apple's servers. You want to copy/paste these files downloaded into the flash drive, too. This is an important step. Make sure you do this or else when you install Windows, things like the keyboard will not work.
You have now made your bootable flash drive.
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Time to make the space on your hard drive to put Windows on. In macOS, open Disk Utility. Resize the amount of space that macOS is using on the hard drive. If you have a 500gb hard drive, for example, resize the macOS portion to 350GB to give Windows 150gb of space. You decide how much you want to give Windows.
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Keep your flash drive plugged in, restart your computer, when your computer starts up hold down the Option key until you see a picture of a hard drive and a flash drive. This is where you select what device to boot your mac off of. Click the flash drive.
This is now the Windows installer. Follow all of the steps inside to install Windows. When asked what partition to install Windows on, select the 150gb or whatever size you decided to. Select the partition, click Delete, then click New. This will format the partition in a format Windows can use. Then, continue through the install until you get it all done and Windows boots up!
Note: During windows install, if it asks for Internet skip those steps. Your Internet will not work because the Mac drivers have not yet been installed to get Internet to work.
- When Windows boots up you will not have Internet and some other things may not work. This is because you must install the drivers from Apple to get this all to work. If you installed the drivers correctly on the flash drive, when Windows boots up you should have a window pop-up automatically asking you to "install bootcamp". These are the drivers. Run this install and magically things should all now work!